A woman admits her sexual relationship with a dolphin to the world in a BBC documentary to be released June 17. Margaret Howe Lovatt, a female animal researcher, said she had sex frequently with a male dolphin during a NASA-funded experiment on the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1963.

Few think Western civilization is on the brink of collapse—but it's also doubtful the Romans and Mesopotamians saw their own demise coming either. If we're to avoid their fate, we'll need policies to reduce economic inequality and preserve natural resources, according to a NASA-fundedstudy that looked at the collapses of previous societies. In unequal societies, researchers said, "collapse is difficult to avoid.... Elites grow and consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society." Wait - I thought NASA's foremost mission was to improve relations with the Muslim world. Why are they talking about income inequality? -RB

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and someone never known to be a rabble-rouser, recently co-wrote with fellow Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan an op-ed in USA Today declaring that the space policy of the Obama administration is in “substantial disarray.” The astronauts protested the decision to kill the Constellation program, the George W. Bush-era plan for a new lunar mission with new rockets and spacecraft. Here’s Bob Crippen, who was the pilot of the first shuttle mission, STS-1, back in 1981: “I’ve never seen NASA so screwed up as it is right now. . . . They don’t know where they’re going.”